The Vatican has fired back at German bishops after their criticisms of a controversial Roman parish reform instruction, but it has offered them the chance to clear up their “doubts and perplexity” over the document.
Yesterday July 30 a new temporary mission of the Scalabrinian Missionary Sisters left to tend to the refugees on Lesbos.
The nuncio in France is to meet with women ‘apostles’ seeking their place in the Church hierarchy as one of their number, a would-be female bishop, received a death threat.
A media report has lifted the lid on “abuses of power and conscience” and “psychological blackmail” in some women’s orders.
In a book preface released on Tuesday, Pope Francis reflected on the lessons Christians have learned from the COVID-19 pandemic.
A German abbess charged with “aiding and abetting illegal residents” is standing up for herself, saying that “to give concrete help to a person in need can’t be a crime”.
The selflessness of immigrants during the COVID-19 pandemic has forced sections of the UK media and general public to rethink their xenophobia.
Today, on the UN World Day against Trafficking in Persons, Pope Francis pleaded that “much remains to be done” to end human trafficking, “an open wound on the body of contemporary society”.
“Power, money, relationships… The Church lives a lot of things that contradict what Jesus said and did”, a Spanish theologian has written.
Cathedrals and chapels have played vital roles in the development of Christian culture.
According to Caritas Internationalis, the number of people falling prey to human trafficking has increased to a “worrying” level due to coronavirus lockdown measures.
A theologian has called for women cardinals, arguing that in the Church “the untethering of competency from orders is long overdue”.
A German bishop has renewed his “urgent” plea for more women in the Church’s hierarchy, insisting that “female leadership is important and enriching”.
In 2018, Pope Francis announced a deal that cleared the way for the reappointment of clergy in China, something that the Vatican described as “a question of great importance for the life” of the Catholic Church.
As COVID-19 surges in the United States and worldwide, even the richest and best insured Americans understand, possibly for the first time, what it’s like not to have the medicines they need to survive if they get sick.
In most of the Western media, the focus on the COVID-19 attack has concerned government policies, their character, efficacy, and extent—as well as their economic cost.
Prayer and charity: these are the two arms Pope Francis has repeatedly extended from the beginning of his pontificate to the “dear Ukrainian people”, especially to those afflicted by a 6-year war on the eastern border of the nation.
Vatican Congregation for the Clergy member Cardinal Anders Arborelius has said he “doesn’t know” how the controversial Congregation instruction on parish reform was completed.
Papal confidant Father Antonio Spadaro SJ says the next pope “wont be able to go back” on Francis’ reforms.
The Catholic Church, in its missionary commitment in many parts of the world, is paying for its contribution to fighting the COVID-19 pandemic which does not spare peoples and nations from all continents.
A forthcoming Vatican instruction soon to be published is to insist on “mutual respect” between religious and bishops, according to a media report.
A Vatican cardinal has denounced the “sick system of relationships of submission and domination” that “in many cases” women religious suffer at the hands of men in the Church.
Pope Francis on Sunday invited young people around the world to perform “gestures of tenderness” toward the elderly, as many are forced into isolation to observe Covid-19 health guidelines.
The German Church is at loggerheads over Bishops’ plans to reform seminaries, with a debate between a theologian and a prelate responsible for the proposals the latest show of tension over the issue.
Lamenting that “it doesn’t help a bit”, yet another German bishop has criticised the new Vatican instruction on parish reform, while Cardinal Walter Kasper has defended the document, although with nuances.
“For the fourth year, we are gathered in this too small church of Saint-Étienne du Rouvray, with you priests, nuns, parishioners, with you, the dear family of Father Jacques Hamel, with you witnesses of this dramatic gesture committed here”.
A Vatican official has backed as a possible “win-win situation” the “mass regularisation” of ‘illegal’ immigrants.
A cardinal has called for a “change in mentality” among Catholics on the subject of migration, saying the widespread human mobility in our world today is “not a crime, but a right” and “not a problem, but an opportunity”.
In the wake of the massive protests around the world against racism and colonialism, calls have been made to do away with the cross on the Swedish flag because it represents the nation’s Christian heritage and the oppression it allegedly stands for.
The new Vatican parish instruction is being met with criticism not only in Germany but also in Portugal and Austria, with one Portuguese priest theologian claiming that the text is “a document destined for oblivion”.